ON THE LEVEL: Mass timber not just a leaderboard for Neutral’s Nate Helbach

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Young and ambitious are two words that come to mind when talking to Nate Helbach, real estate developer and founder of Madison-based Neutral.

Helbach’s company is known for its focus on mass timber construction and has already won a few contracts to build multistory mixed-use projects largely using wood, including one project that will become the tallest mass timber building in North America when completed.

But Helbach says he’s not an ego-driven developer pining to build the tallest wooden buildings, rather that tall, mass timber buildings are a byproduct of his company’s other goals.

Neutral, a vertically integrated real estate development company with more than 30 employees, is focused on two main aspects.

The first aspect is understanding how to build new construction that will improve the health and well-being of residents.

“And then we look at it also through the lens of, how do we make this a sustainable project that’s really focused on regeneration and having more of an environment that’s focused on healing both our bodies, which are the physical bodies,” Helbach said. “But then also from the ecosystem side, the Earth’s body, of looking at, ‘OK, how do we be regenerative and focus on healing the land?’”

That’s where mass timber comes in for Neutral.

Concrete and steel, the other two most common building materials, don’t regrow like mass timber does.
While some may argue deforestation is a damaging practice to the earth, Helbach said all the timber used in Neutral’s projects is sourced from forests certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, a nonprofit that promotes responsible management of the world’s forests.

In the following interview, Helbach talks about why he started Neutral, his ambitious project proposals and why mass timber is such an essential part of his buildings.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

The Daily Reporter: First, why don’t you tell me about what led you to jump into the real estate development industry. Why did you decide to start Neutral?

Helbach: It came out of a thesis that I had in school, and after school, I went to work for a smaller Midwest developer where we were just building a very traditional, kind of commoditized-style multifamily [buildings]. And it just wasn’t super compelling from both the investment side, but also from the perspective of being a resident. It was like, ‘man this is kind of depressing to live in these buildings.’ And so really looking through the lens of, okay, there’s an existential crisis we have here in our ecosystem. How do we solve that? And then also looking kind of through the lens of: residents don’t necessarily enjoy living in big, behemoth multi-family spaces that we’ve seen go up across the U.S.

TDR: One of your most recent projects is the Neutral.Edison building in downtown Milwaukee, a 31-story, 350-unit multifamily apartment building with most floors made of mass timber, which will make it the largest building of its kind in North America when completed. Why do you think mass timber is an important aspect of that project?

Helbach: Mainly because, going back to those two initiatives, well-being and sustainability, which we really kind of see as synchronous between the two. So, we’re looking at soil impact, we’re looking at air quality impact, we’re looking at carbon impact, we’re looking at all these different ecosystems within the broader ecosystem of the environment. And really, when we look at our structure, there’s a few options. You can go with concrete, which there’s not really a great option for concrete to be sustainable or regenerative. But you look at mass timber, and you see mass timber as this kind of regenerative element, where you have forests growing every single year.

TDR: Another project your company is angling for is a redevelopment of Madison’s Brayton Lot downtown just a few blocks from the Capitol. Can you tell me more about what’s in for the city?

Helbach: We’re taking what we’re doing in Milwaukee and duplicating the same thing. It’s really looking at how we turn this building into something more than where someone rents a box and decides to live for 12 months. It’s more like everything we talked about on the health and well-being side. But also adding this co-working aspect, like the café with Copa Vida, a big events space on level 21, and incorporating a community aspect as well. It’s adjacent to the sustainability and the well-being and health and fitness services that we’re doing on level seven.

TDR: Why is offering more affordable housing for families making 30-60% of the area median income important for downtown Madison?

Helbach: I think it’s an important thing across the U.S. If you go back to the 1940s, home prices were around $2,900, and you look at income, that’s around $1,700 on a household [annual] basis. Then you extrapolate that out even further and you go to 2024, you see that home prices have gone up to $410,000 and incomes have only increased by $70,000, so you have a 5.8x differential. This affordability crisis is not unique to Madison. Families are basically being forced to live in certain apartments because they must. We as developers are tasked with trying to figure out this problem and solve the problem.

TDR: Neutral also answered and won an RFP for a project just east of the Neutral.Edison building recently, with an ambitious mixed-use plan. What’s driving Neutral’s momentum in answering RFPs and what credibility do you feel Neutral brings when answering RFPs?

Helbach: I think the reason why Milwaukee really likes our proposal for Marcus Center, why I hope Madison will award us for Brayton Lot, is because we’re doing these things that the city has alignment with, which is creating public space, having public parks, activating the ground floor, creating beautiful homes for residents to live in, being able to engage the health and well-being services and being sustainable. It’s not just checking the boxes to say, ‘Hey, we checked the boxes.’ We’re implementing this in our current projects. And I think cities see that.

TDR: The Daily Reporter has reported the project to replace the Marcus Center’s parking garage east of the Neutral.Edison building will be 50 stories tall. How many of those will be mass timber?

Helbach: If we continue with the plan of 50 stories, it would be all mass timber. [The final number of stories] we’re working through with the city, and we’re also just working through our own economic analysis to ensure that we can have the city of Milwaukee absorb that many units all at once.

TDR: It seems you’re focused on building very tall timber buildings. Is one of your life goals to stay at the top of the mass timber building leaderboard?

Helbach: I don’t think it’s really a goal of mine. It’s more that we’re interested in building great, contextual buildings focused on our two-pronged thesis of sustainability and well-being, and we’re interested in creating financial returns for investors. And if that means we’re building the next tallest mass timber building, great. If that means that we fall down the “mass timber tallest leaderboard,” then that’s okay, too.